Ruger P97

Guns Magazine, Dec, 2000 by Massad Ayoob

Tough, accurate and stylish, Ruger's semi-auto, centerfire pistols just keep getting better and better.

One meaning of the word "evolution" is that something keeps getting better. This is certainly true of Ruger's latest centerfire auto, which many consider the best of the P-series. The P97 is the P90 .45 with the "plastic frame" treatment of the P95, It comes with an eight-shot magazine that works perfectly in the earlier P90, bringing either gun up to a capacity of nine rounds of .45 ACP.

Before the plans for Ruger's first P-series pistol were revealed to us back in the early 1980s, we were sworn to secrecy. Then, in his executive office at the Newport, NH factory Bill Ruger showed us the early plans for "a 9mm pistol for Everyman." It would be an utterly reliable, heavy-duty, high-capacity sidearm that would profoundly undersell Beretta, SIG and Smith & Wesson, to make it affordable to the average armed citizen who earned a workingman's wage. Obviously still on the corporate radar screen, but not necessarily the gun's raison d'etre, was the huge sales potential such a gun could have in the military and police markets.

The police community's infatuation with the "wondernine" was only just beginning. In the mid-'80s a strange new pistol called the Glock had emerged in Europe. In 1984, only three state police agencies had committed to the 9mm auto. They were Illinois (S&W), Connecticut (Beretta), and New Jersey (H&K), and only Connecticut had chosen a high-capacity model.

The Joint Services Small Arms Project tests for a pistol firing the 9mm round to replace the venerable 1911A1.45 were ongoing. Ever since the doomed 1949 testing for the same purpose that had led to the lightweight Colt Commander and S&W Model 39, most of the firearms industry had taken rumored U.S. Armed Forces procurement of 9mm pistols in quantity with a grain of salt.

This was disregarded by some industry observers as a 'boy who cried wolf" thing. Not until testing at Eglin Air Force Base under the late Jack Robbins was taken seriously by the Pentagon, and it appeared that the Beretta was going to win, did the industry scramble to take this huge potential contract seriously.

As America's outlook on pistols changed, the P-series Ruger autoloaders would end up being most enthusiastically embraced by the very shooters they were created for -- law-abiding armed citizens.

The P-85

"Our centerfire self-loading pistol was under study for many years, but we wanted to make it to suit our own criteria, not to suit someone else's timetable,", Ruger said in a 1987 interview. "The U.S. tests were being turned on and off for years, but about two years ago we seriously decided to go ahead with the pistol's final design anyway. If it came in time for the U.S. trials, that would be good; if it didn't, we still felt that we had the best pistol of its type available and would find a ready market here and elsewhere. And that's exactly what happened."

The gun's design was finalized in 1985, hence its designation as P85. It did not, however, reach the general market until about 1987. In Ruger & His Guns, arms historian Larry Wilson notes that "The first year's production of slightly more than 2,100 pistols in 1987 expanded to more than 30,500 in 1988, and to nearly 85,300 in 1989."

This was indeed a healthy turnout. For perspective, Kimber was considered to have become a huge force in the handgun market when it produced 31,762 of its 1911 pistols in 1998. By the time Kimber's production reportedly doubled two years later, that company was seen as the dominant force in the 1911 market.

Things looked good initially. Marketing director Steve Vogel painted a sanguine picture in a contemporary gun magazine when he said, "The state police of Wisconsin adopted the P85 in 1987. In addition, it has been selected for use by the governments of countries in Central America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The Israeli Air Force, for example, has ordered and received a substantial number of P85s."

Alas, things were not perfect. The safety/decock levers were so small as to be vestigial, and out of the reach of average size thumbs. There were reports of malfunctions with hollowpoints. Accuracy was disappointing, with 4" at 25 yards generally being considered a good group for a P85. While Wisconsin's state troopers did indeed adopt the gun, a host of other agencies rejected it.

Always a perfectionist, Ruger was already back at the drawing board when an accidental discharge involving a P85 with a broken firing pin sealed the gun's fate. This first gun had gotten Sturm, Ruger Inc. off to a fast start in the center-fire autoloader market, but the P85 itself was doomed.

The Mark II And The P89

No one was ever injured by a broken firing pin incident in a Ruger center-fire auto, but the man in charge has always preferred to err on the side of caution. Some 200,000 P85s had been produced when Ruger determined in 1990 that, if the firing pin was broken in one particular spot, it could result in an unintentional discharge when the decocking lever was activated.